Song: “Vor i Vaglaskogi” – KALEO
I was alone. It was early, which was hard to determine because the sun had never fully set. That was the danger of coming here in the shoulder season. The weather was still gloomy but there was never any darkness. A pall held sway over the looming rocks, forever on the horizon. It was as if the Gods were cranky that they were forced to be awake. I knew I was. The man at the gas station, the only ‘coffee shop’ open for miles, had been astounded that one man would order two large coffees. Black. He stared at me as I tried to order in Icelandic. While paying with cash. He laughed and told me that he was Greek, working here to get away for the summer.
Damn tourists.
The night before was a stopover in a picturesque yet unmemorable town. I had sat in my rental car astride a jagged cliff for the entire evening, watching the waves relentlessly pound the rocks below. That was the way of this country. It is a rugged land of brutal rock fixtures under constant assault from water above and magma below. The tectonic plates underneath are but the sheath; the blade caught between the hands of these great forces. We are but spectators in the lands of Gods. All we can do is pray that we aren’t washed away in the tides… Or that we don’t fall on the sword.
I had carefully planned this part of the trip. There was a beach, supposedly well hidden, an hour away. It was between the first and second cup of coffee that I noticed a tear running down my cheek. That was OK. That was why I was here. I was no different than the Earth beneath me. There was rage there. Too much of it. I was caught in a stasis loop; the tectonic activity of trauma and grief subducting underneath the mountains of strain and struggle. I needed Mt. Sanborn to erupt, to finally let loose the magma that had built for so long. I had found that out the first day.
***
Ten hours of flight time and a day of traveling without sleep had all coalesced into an abbreviated existence, like I was a sentence that was still being written. Or edited. The planes and airports quickly turned into a rental car and barren roadways. The radio had chirped in an unintelligible language. Frenziedly stabbing buttons did no good. Instead of silence, raging Icelandic metal blared from the speakers. I reached to turn it off. My hand froze.
It was as if the song was singing the music of my soul. It was a language that I knew without having ever heard or spoken it. I had been taught for so long, brainwashed, ‘trained’ into thinking that my anger was irrelevant. That ‘good boys’ were never angry. That anger, in and of itself, was a bad thing. This place had other plans. I immediately became aware that I was supposed to hear this music. And I was supposed to love it. I was singing along, flying down the highway south of Reykjavik, when suddenly I was on my knees, the car idling, barely pulled off the road-
Screaming. Spitting. Engorging the hollow cavity of my chest… Bellowing as loud as I could. I thought that I was going to die. I felt my knees dug into the course Earth and the cold chill of morning seeping from the hardscrabble ground. Who knows how many people saw.
I could feel the last few months melting off in a torrent. I could feel the years of pain shedding like an onion. I knew then that I had to see the tectonic activity, to watch the mountains that were moved, to be able to finally move my own. I had to understand that it was possible. I had to let these deep reservoirs of magma pop like a viscous and deep pimple… Because a part of me hadn’t let go of these horrible stories. And there was a part of me that I didn’t want to admit to; a part of me that didn’t want me to write these words. Even now, my thunderous fingers have slowed and become ponderous, grittily pushing through the keys and sentences. Because nobody wants to admit when they lose; that someone destroyed them.
I lost.
She got the better of me, wrecked my mind, took everything I owned, and cut deeply into my soul. I had been defeated by a force of evil. I would never be the same. I would never get back the innocence of believing in someone ever again. I’d kept staggering forward. Despite it all. And I had found infinite treasures. But there was something else…
So, there I was. Brought to my knees in a barren land. Screaming to whatever God would listen.
And something heard me.
***
There was no one around when I slid down the rock face. They would be there before long. It was months till peak season, and the tour busses already outnumbered the birds. I had seen the resentment of the locals. Nearly every pull-off and gas station was filled to the brim with fanny-pack toting tourists, cameras aloft, feet trampling the otherwise undisturbed grass. It felt like a race to get ahead of them; to get deep enough into the interior to find solitude. To find a good place to scream again. After a brief drop, my feet hit the pliable ground beneath.
The black sand was springy yet gripping, allowing each footstep but then gently holding on. I could hear the voice of the waves, insistently pounding, causing sprays of salt water that cast a shimmering glaze across the beach. There were no birds here. No other souls to see. My footsteps blemished the pristine surface until smoothed by the odd wave.
I walked for a long time. It was a beach I had picked well. There was a jutting formation branching away from the ridgeline that could only be seen from the beach. And if you could scale the rock outcropping at its base, there was a small opening on the other side, hidden from the road. Up and down I went, sliding again, then dropping to the waiting ground beneath. A few steps passed underneath my tremulous legs. I fell to my knees.
By then, I’d fallen in love. Iceland was like watching a woman that you love slowly, so slowly, taking off her shirt, the collar catching briefly, so briefly, on her lips, and passing over her head. It is like holding that woman by the waist, dancing on top of a table, melting as it sinks into a pool of lava. It is also like watching this woman walk backwards through the pouring rain, her long dress drenched and clinging to her hips, blowing you a kiss as she disappears around the corner. This woman now held my hand and whispered in my ears. Then she kissed my cheek, so gently, and faded into the surf.
I felt the moisture begin to seep in. I dug into the black sand, desperately rending tears in the solid form of the beach. I had to get into the fissures; to tap into the wellspring of the core. I had to find the seam so that I could relieve the pressure and let the rain fall into the deeps. I wasn’t fully aware of the processes that were happening inside of my mind. Twice the surf rushed into the narrow inlet, drenching my body and dragging me toward the waves. A howl tore from my lips as the mantle fell into the encroaching water. Here it was. The end.
Something shifted. What I thought had been expunged turned out to simply be the pull-tab to the rest of the can. I saw, with startling clarity, just how much I hadn’t expressed. I had tried to shoot the moon, finishing everything in the beginning. I had wanted to skip the necessary human processes and go straight to the enlightenment. But that is not how the human experience is. We have to suffer. We have to let the anger bubble and boil and blather; to overflow the cauldron. We have to scream.
I let it rip.
My father. My mother. My brother. My step mother. My grandparents. The adults that were supposed to protect me. Just one of them… to shelter the kid who was caught between the rock and the hard… All of the shitty friends… The road… The years… Moments… Fake smiles… Being led through my own house… Lies, lies, lies… Barren towns… An unimaginable list of place, people, and things… A lifetime of drifting, with all of the stories and heartaches attached. The lid had been opened.
I erupted.
I occasionally heard myself, distanced and distracted. Guttural death screams of a being without hope. I was most likely in shock. I could feel a strong hand on my shoulder as my consciousness was ushered upward. I watched my own body. There I was. Writhing in the sand. My shadow was close too, holding my hand like it had so often as a child.
There is something that very few people understand. Sometimes, when the peril is the greatest and the moment bleakest, when there is absolutely no reason to have any semblance of hope, the only thing there is left to do is charge. You must surprise The Enemy so thoroughly that you can push through the rushing hordes and breach. You have to take one last deep breath, prepare your innards for the inevitable blade thrust, and flow outwards. I had no idea how long I had been screaming and crying on that uninhabited inlet. Anyone watching was treated to the sight of a man finally choosing himself over…
I tore into the Earth. Digging. Rending. There was something in me that had been desperately holding on, something that had to claw its way out… snapshots of smiles … fissures… longing… something slippery… caught behind the bed… Another howl tore from my lips. I was raw, a live wire left to flop in the encroaching puddles… Emotions became tangible and edible, chewed out by teeth well-used to… The doorway stood open, held agape by a gold-toothed God, smiling at the long-lost son who deigned to visit. Coaxing. Encouraging…
I tore out of the sand. I was a snapped trap; a feral beast set prey on an unsuspecting wanderer. I sprinted into the sea. Bellowing. Raging. A son of Odin. A man of the world. A darkness set free to dance with the awaiting arms of the light. Balanced. Wise. The bliss of purpose, effortlessly carrying the weight of trauma, washed me out to sea. I punched the waves. I stood, if just for a moment, immovable against the roaring tide.
And then, finally, I thought that I was going to live.
The sun had peaked its head above the rock line when I emerged from the inlet. I quickly scaled the rocky outcropping and spied a tour bus above where I had parked. As I made my way back across the black sands of the beach, there were other tracks visible. The surf pounded away, casting its shimmering sheen, resolutely indifferent. Eventually I passed a nervous looking tourist. She must have thought me quite the sight: a tall American, dressed in jeans and hoodie, drenched from head to toe, walking barefoot across the black sands. I hadn’t bothered to wipe the tears from my eyes.
I smiled with gold-plated teeth.
“Iceland, eh?”